The other important group that continues to encourage wasteful energy use is certain key OPEC exporters such as Iran and Venezuela, that sell energy to their own people at far below world prices. This shows no sign of diminsishing.

5:49 pm July 9, 2009

Ronald Montesano wrote :

Fossil fuel driven climate change is a myth. However if Waxman-Markey is passed industries will just move from the U.S. to other countries -- countries that pollute far more than the U.S.! And our reward besides less jobs will be higher energy prices!

People can forget about biofuels being a major substitute for oil. Why? Because agriculture (indeed, life itself) requires phosphorus which there is a finite amount of. With the worlds' population placing greater demands on the production of food, significant biofuel production would put dangerous pressure on phosphorus supplies.

7:07 am July 13, 2009

Rich wrote :

The future of oil use depends almost entirely on how future cars are designed. Two-thirds of oil consumption is from powering cars and trucks. The redesigning of cars is a relatively easy task, if the will is there. Right now, the wrong people have been designing the future cars that use little oil. The GM Volt is being designed by a company that is a gasoline car manufacturer. GM has little experience in designing (and more importantly in getting enough executive management support) none gasoline based future cars like the Volt. It is difficult and time consuming for humans to change strips. That is why it is taking a long time to get the Volt out of the labs and into production. And the Volt is still not the best design, as it is too expensive and it is still a first cut. However, car designing is not that hard. Once the Volt comes out, new improvements can come rapidly. Improvements may follow the evolutionary history of the IBM Personal Computer. The original IBM PC was designed by "old school" mainframe computer engineers under the control of old school mainframe executives like old school car engineers and old school car executives at GM. The original IBM PC was too expensive with limited memory and disk storage "range" just like the Volt, which will be too expensive and which will have limited battery range. The original IBM PC was designed for the office with a now forgotten cheaper IBM PC, Junior computer designed for the home user. The Volt is also designed for short office commutation in the electric mode. But once the IBM PC came out, and formed the standard base, cloners and other companies and startups totally reworked the initial design to build much cheaper, much more powerful personal computers that are truly personal computers. If the Volt takes on a similar evolution as the personal computer, its design will be advanced and be taken to places undreamed of today like the evolution of the PC. Oil like the once dominant mainframes may be relegated to a niche commodity in the future. Oil like mainframes may mostly be consigned into the dustbins of history in the future.

12:53 pm July 15, 2009

Norris Hall wrote :

Forget about oil. .

Not only is it becoming increasing more difficult to find oil, forcing us to spend more to drill further and deeper, it is an economically unreliable energy source ..subject to price manipulation by oil cartels, commodities speculators and energy companies.

Currently the world's energy is derived from either oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear, solar, hydroelectric, wind or geothermal.

Here are, what I think, the qualities we should require of the ideal energy source for the next 1000 years.

Whatever it is should be....

1. unlimited-one that will NEVER "run out"
2. universal-so abundant that all countries will have access to it and not just a few lucky countries who can hold the rest of the world "hostage"
3. cheap-an energy source that even the poorest of people will have easy access to.
4. clean-any future energy source should not contribute to a worsening of our environment
5.consumer empowered-an energy source that will free people from dependence on third parties like utility companies to set the price , method and cost of delivery.
Oil doesn't make it on any one of the five points.

This is the 21st century. The age of the internal combustion engine is coming to an end.

Add a Comment

Error message

Name

We welcome thoughtful comments from readers. Please comply with our guidelines. Our blogs do not require the use of your real name.

Comment

About Environmental Capital

Environmental Capital provides daily news and analysis of the shifting energy and environmental landscape. The Wall Street Journal’s Keith Johnson is the lead writer. Environmental Capital is led by Journal energy reporter Russell Gold, and includes contributions from other writers at the Journal, WSJ.com, and Dow Jones Newswires. Write us at environmentalcapital@wsj.com.